Eugene-Louis Boudin

Trouville-sur-Mer – The Artists – Boudin, Eugene-Louis

This page forms part of a series of pages dedicated to the many artists who worked in Trouville-sur-Mer. A full list of all the artists with a link to their works can be found at the bottom of this page.

Eugene Louis Boudin
Eugene Louis Boudin

Movement(s): Impressionism

Eugene Louis Boudin (1824 – 1898) was one of the first French landscape painters to paint outdoors. Boudin was a marine painter, and expert in the rendering of all that goes upon the sea and along its shores. His pastels, summary and economic, garnered the splendid eulogy of Baudelaire; and Corot called him the “King of the skies“.

Born at Honfleur, Boudin was the son of a harbor pilot, and at age 10 the young boy worked on a steamboat that ran between Le Havre and Honfleur. In 1835 the family moved to Le Havre, where Boudin’s father opened a store for stationery and picture frames. Here the young Eugene worked, later opening his own small shop. Boudin’s father had thus abandoned seafaring, and his son gave it up too, having no real vocation for it, though he preserved to his last days much of a sailor’s character: frankness, accessibility, and open-heartedness.

In his shop, in which pictures were framed, Boudin came into contact with artists working in the area and exhibited in the shop the paintings of Constant Troyon and Jean-François Millet, who, along with Jean-Baptiste Isabey and Thomas Couture whom he met during this time, encouraged young Boudin to follow an artistic career.

At the age of 22 he abandoned the world of commerce, started painting full-time, and travelled to Paris the following year and then through Flanders. In 1850 he earned a scholarship that enabled him to move to Paris, where he enrolled as a student in the studio of Eugene Isabey and worked as a copyist at the Louvre.

To supplement his income he often returned to paint in Normandy and, from 1855, made regular trips to Brittany. On 14 January 1863 he married the 28-year-old Breton woman Marie-Anne Guedes in Le Havre and set up home in Paris.

Dutch 17th-century masters profoundly influenced him, and on meeting the Dutch painter Johan Jongkind, who had already made his mark in French artistic circles, Boudin was advised by his new friend to paint outdoors (en plein air).

In 1857/58 Boudin befriended the young Claude Monet, then only 18, and persuaded him to give up his teenage caricature drawings and to become a landscape painter, helping to instil in him a love of bright hues and the play of light on water later evident in Monet’s Impressionist paintings. The two remained lifelong friends and Monet later paid tribute to Boudin’s early influence. Boudin joined Monet and his young friends in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1873, but never considered himself a radical or innovator.

Late in his life, after the death of his wife in 1889, Boudin spent every winter in the south of France as a refuge from his own ill-health, and from 1892 to 1895 made regular trips to Venice. In 1898, recognizing that his life was almost spent, he returned to his home at Deauville, to die on 8 August within sight of the English Channel and under the Channel skies he had painted so often.

He was buried according to his wishes in the Saint-Vincent Cemetery in Montmartre, Paris.

Click here to read Boudin’s full bio on Wikipedia.

NOTE: Click on any image below for a bigger version (no new window will open).

NOTE: A black box like this one, means that there is an explanation text about today’s situation of the painting above it.
NOTE: Click on this photo icon anywhere below a painting to see a photo of what the area looks like today.

NOTE: A blue box like this one, means there is an explanation or a note.

1860 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - A Beach Scene at Trouville
1860 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – A Beach Scene at Trouville

NOTE: You can see the cliffs of Le Havre/Sainte-Adresse in the distance.

1860 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - The piers at Trouville
1860 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – The piers at Trouville

TODAY: Both piers and lighthouses still exist today. The one of the left is in Deauville, the right one in Trouville-sur-Mer. They are divided by the Touques river that flows here into the sea.

1862 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - The Jetty at Trouville, Sunset
1862 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – The Jetty at Trouville, Sunset
1863 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Beach at Trouville
1863 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Beach at Trouville

TODAY: The beach at Trouville is still a very popular place during the summer and gets very crowded and colorful.

1863 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Beach at Trouville
1863 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Beach at Trouville
1863 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Beach at Trouville
1863 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Beach at Trouville
1863 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Beach scene Trouville
1863 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Beach scene Trouville
1863 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - On the beach at Trouville
1863 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – On the beach at Trouville
1863 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - The beach at Trouville
1863 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – The beach at Trouville
1864 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Beach scene Trouville
1864 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Beach scene Trouville
1865 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Fashionable Figures on the Beach
1865 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Fashionable Figures on the Beach

TODAY: There are no longer any beach huts as seen in the paintings, they are now replaced mostly by colorful beach tents.

1865 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - On the Beach, Sunset
1865 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – On the Beach, Sunset
1865 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - On the Beach, Sunset
1865 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – On the Beach, Sunset
1865 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - The Beach at Trouville
1865 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – The Beach at Trouville
1869 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - The Jetty at Trouville
1869 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – The Jetty at Trouville
1870 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - The Boardwalk on the Beach at Trouville
1870 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – The Boardwalk on the Beach at Trouville

TODAY: The wooden boardwalk still exists today, and extends from the river to the end of the Trouville beach.

1875 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - The Port of Trouville
1875 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – The Port of Trouville
1877 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - The Malakoff Tower and the shore at Trouville
1877 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – The Malakoff Tower and the shore at Trouville

TODAY: The Malakoff Tower still stands today and can be seen from the beach. The tower (and house) was built in 1855 by Charles Mozin (a painter) who discovered Trouville and wanted to return.

1878 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Market at Trouville
1878 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Market at Trouville

TODAY: This is the fish market that still exists today. You can buy your fresh as it comes off the boats. You can even eat on the spot.

1880 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Surroundings of Trouville
1880 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Surroundings of Trouville
1880 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Trouville, the tents
1880 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Trouville, the tents
1881 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Fishing boats in Trouville
1881 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Fishing boats in Trouville
1882 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Trouville, the Jetties
1882 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Trouville, the Jetties
1884 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Trouville, the port, the market square and the ferry
1884 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Trouville, the port, the market square and the ferry

TODAY: There still is a small ferry operating daily between Deauville and Trouville. It crosses the Touques river in a few minutes. When the tide is low, a walkway is installed allowing you to cross the (dry) river, see photo—> Click Me!!!

1884 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Trouville
1884 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Trouville
1885 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - the Jetties at Low Tide
1885 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – the Jetties at Low Tide
1885 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Trouville, beach scene
1885 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Trouville, beach scene
1888 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - The Touques. The Deauville bridge in the morning
1888 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – The Touques. The Deauville bridge in the morning
1890 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Trouville, the piers, low tide
1890 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Trouville, the piers, low tide
1890 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Trouville, the port, stranded sailboats
1890 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Trouville, the port, stranded sailboats
1893 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Trouville the piers low tide
1893 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Trouville the piers low tide
1893 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Trouville, the jetties
1893 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Trouville, the jetties
1894 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - The Port of Trouville
1894 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – The Port of Trouville
1894 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Trouville, the Harbour
1894 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Trouville, the Harbour
???? - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Beach scene at Trouville
???? – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Beach scene at Trouville
???? - Eugene-Louis Boudin - The Beach at Trouville
???? – Eugene-Louis Boudin – The Beach at Trouville
???? - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Trouville, the piers, high tide
???? – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Trouville, the piers, high tide

Villerville

The village of Villerville (population: 700) lies to the North of Trouville-sur-Mer along the coast.

1893 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - The shore of Villerville
1893 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – The shore of Villerville
1893 - Eugene-Louis Boudin - Villerville, the shore
1893 – Eugene-Louis Boudin – Villerville, the shore

Boudin painted in several places in Normandy ( a link “” to his works will appear below for each city when published):

Trouville-sur-Mer has been an in-spot for artists and wealthy patrons. Located next to Deauville and sharing the same railway station,many artists came here to work and mingle with the high-societe folks.

Here is a list of artists who working in Trouville (a link “⇠” to that artist’s works will appear when published). An “*” after an artist’s name means that the artist did not work in Trouville itself, but in a nearby town.

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Today: Trouville-sur-Mer twin lighthouses and piers
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